For Review Only 19 Providers Like Netflix and Amazon Became Powerful New Players in the Subscription Video- 20 21 On-Demand Market

Critical Studies in Television

‘Moments and Opportunities’: On -air promos and the popular imagination of BBC iPlayer

Journal: Critical Studies in Television

Manuscript ID Draft ManuscriptFor Type: Original Review Article Only BBC iPlayer, interstitials, on-demand television, paratexts, promos, public Keywords: service broadcasting

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1 1 2 3 ‘Moments and Opportunities’: 4 5 On-air promos and the popular imagination of BBC iPlayer 6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 Abstract 14 15 This essay examines the promotion of the BBC’s online streaming and download service, 16 17 iPlayer, as it has been presented to audiences through broadcast television. Analysing 18 transitions in the BBC’sFor representation Review of iPlayer, it consider Only the popular imagination of 19 20 iPlayer within on-air promos during the 2010s, a period when the Corporation was striving 21 22 to communicate its role as a digital public service broadcaster ahead of charter review. 23 24 Examining the paratextual function of iPlayer interstitials, the essay considers the vernacular 25 move from portals and platform mobility in the early 2010s to narratives increasingly based 26 27 on the ‘need-states’ of audiences. 28 29 30 31 32 Keywords : BBC iPlayer; interstitials, on-demand television; paratexts; promos; public service 33 34 broadcasting 35 36 37 38 39 On 16 April 2014, the BBC launched a new marketing campaign for its on-demand iPlayer 40 41 service. This comprised a series of ten-second scenes depicting the British Easter vacation. 42 43 These ranged from portraits of travel delay on motorways, in airports and at ferry ports to 44 45 rain-battered tents and remote hamlets, both without access to wi-fi. Each vignette ended 46 with the pink logo of BBC iPlayer and the strapline ‘download something good before you 47 48 go’. Emphasising TV viewing as something mobile and portable, the trailers presented BBC 49 50 iPlayer as a travel companion, a device ideally suited to the behaviours and rituals of 51 52 individuals, couples and families on the move during a national holiday weekend. Appearing 53 in the junctions of the BBC’s linear schedule, the promotional address of the trailers worked 54 55 to reconstruct the ephemerality of broadcast television. Short in length, and functioning in 56 57 TV’s interstitial space, these promotional texts focused on fleeting scenes of non-domestic 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 2 of 21

2 1 2 3 British life; they dramatized a digital media environment where the ephemeral nature of 4 5 television, and its contexts of viewing, were being recast by asynchronous forms of media 6 7 distribution and consumption. 8 9 This essay examines the promotion of BBC iPlayer as it has been presented to 10 11 audiences through broadcast television; it considers how on-air promos have been used in 12 the linear TV schedule to invite viewing behaviours beyond it. iPlayer branding and 13 14 promotion became increasingly ubiquitous within the ‘flow’ of BBC television in the 2010s, 15 16 consonant with the platform’s centrality to the broadcaster’s digital strategy. Launched on 17 18 Christmas Day in 2007,For BBC iPlayer Review initially provided access Only to broadcast television through 19 20 a seven-day catch-up service delivered through personal computers. By the time of the 21 ‘download something good’ campaign, however, iPlayer had developed across four screens 22 23 (mobile, tablet, PC, television) and over 1200 devices, and was receiving ten million user 24 25 ‘requests’ per day in the UK (BBC 2014). While BBC iPlayer accounted for just 2-3 percent of 26 27 all BBC audience viewing in 2014, reflecting the endurance of live broadcast television in the 28 UK,1 the Corporation’s on-demand service had developed a powerful brand presence in 29 30 British media life. Indeed, its promotional presence was such that a YouGov poll named ‘BBC 31 32 iPlayer’ the UK’s number one brand in terms of consumer perception in 2013, ahead of 33 34 Samsung (2nd), John Lewis (3rd), BBC.co.uk (6th), YouTube (7th) and Marks & Spencer (8th). 35 36 I seek to explore the promotional imagination of BBC iPlayer since 2010, the period 37 38 when, according to James Bennett and Niki Strange, the product emerged as the 39 40 ‘predominant strategic innovation of the Corporation’ (2014, 67). In doing so, this essay 41 builds on a growing body of scholarship that considers how promotional and advertising 42 43 materials contribute to the social construction of new technology. This incorporates work in 44 45 film and television studies that examines how industrial discourses associated with digital 46 47 delivery have produced vernaculars around media technology and consumption practice. In 48 49 New Media and Popular Imagination , William Boddy suggests that ‘ephemeral television 50 commercials can illuminate some of the wider issues involved in the take-up of new 51 52 domestic electronic media since they typically enact dense and affective scenarios of socially 53 54 embedded technologies’ (2004, 24). Boddy is concerned with examining how changes in the 55 56 forms and uses of electronic media in the home during the twentieth century, principally in 57 the US, have ‘served to incarnate and condense wider social tensions around the shifting 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 3 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

3 1 2 3 definitions of public and private space, the roles of men and women inside and outside the 4 5 home, and the construction of personal and national identity’ (ibid, 4). Promotional 6 7 materials become a key resource in this context, a vernacular site for examining how 8 ‘strategic fantasies of consumption’ have taken hold in specific historical junctures, and in 9 10 ways that have come to affect the meanings and fortunes of new communication 11 12 technologies in particular markets. 13 14 Analysing developments in convergence culture, Chuck Tryon turns similarly to 15 16 promotional materials, considering how advertisements by US cable television companies 17 18 and mobile media Forfirms ‘imagined Review platform mobility’ in Only the 2000s. Examining tropes of 19 20 mobility, flexibility and convenience, Tryon considers how promotional texts helped ‘to 21 naturalize new viewing platforms, while also showing how they will enable users to 22 23 transcend the limitations of current media technologies’ (2012, 294). Focusing on the same 24 25 period, Max Dawson (2014) examines commercials for digital video recording (DVR) 26 27 platforms such as TiVO in the 2000s; he identifies linear TV ads as one of a number of 28 discursive sites that helped develop the proposition of DVR technology ‘rationalizing’ the act 29 30 of watching television, making it more efficient and productive as a leisure activity. While 31 32 Tryon suggests that audiences were given representations of how digital screen 33 34 technologies could be incorporated into daily life as a way to minimise their potential 35 36 disruption to traditional viewing habits, Dawson sees a more extensive ideological project in 37 DVR advertising at the turn of the twenty-first century; he suggests that digital television 38 39 technologies inspired fantasies of watching television ‘faster’ and ‘better’, something he 40 41 connects with neoliberal social ideals. In different ways, Boddy, Tryon and Dawson examine 42 43 the discursive function of ephemeral advertising materials, something that Paul Grainge and 44 Catherine Johnson (2015) develop more broadly in their study of the way that promotional 45 46 screen content imagined transformations reshaping media culture across the connected 47 48 fields of mobile communication, television, film and live events in the late 2000s and early 49 50 2010s. 51 52 This essay’s focus on the promotional imagination of BBC iPlayer between 2010 and 53 54 2015 corresponds with a moment when the BBC was navigating its role as a digital public 55 56 service broadcaster. Responding in 2009 to a government report called Digital Britain which 57 laid out plans for developing digital infrastructure and participation in the UK, the BBC 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 4 of 21

4 1 2 3 described its role ‘not just in developing digital technologies, but in making them an 4 5 everyday experience for tens of millions of Britons’ (BBC 2009, 3). In the context of 6 7 government policy measures to develop and enable the social and economic potentialities 8 of ‘being digital’ (Carter, 2009), technologies like iPlayer were positioned by the BBC as 9 10 strategic in helping drive broadband take-up and the market of mobile and online TV. Of 11 12 course, iPlayer was not the only development in the nascent field of online television 13 14 distribution. While major networks in the free-to-air (ITV, Channel 4) and pay-TV (Sky, Virgin 15 Media) markets all developed catch-up and video-on-demand services in the second half of 16 17 the 2000s, hybrid digital television and broadband services such as BT Vision and standalone 18 For Review Only 19 providers like Netflix and Amazon became powerful new players in the subscription video- 20 21 on-demand market. Between 2006 and 2015, the BBC’s share of the broadcast market fell 22 from 40 to 25 percent (Higgins 2015, 223). This gave rise to searching questions about the 23 24 meaning and identity of public service broadcasting in a digital world. For Tony Hall, the 25 26 BBC’s Director-General from 2013, BBC iPlayer was central to the Corporation’s digital 27 28 future. Rather than a catch-up service offering extended windows for linear broadcast 29 30 content, iPlayer was increasingly conceived by BBC managers in the 2010s as an 31 entertainment destination in its own right, a personalized on-demand service described by 32 33 Hall as ‘the front door to many people to the whole BBC’ (Hall, 2013). It is my contention 34 35 that the BBC’s identity as a digital broadcaster - what Hall would call ‘an internet-first BBC 36 37 which belongs to everyone and where everyone belongs’ (2015) - would be performed 38 within TV thresholds and junctions, and through iPlayer logos and promos specifically. 39 40 41 Considering the BBC’s move to become a ‘digital destination’ in the 2000s, Niki 42 43 Strange (2011) notes the multitude of messages and calls to action that began to appear in 44 programme end-credits in the mid-2000s. Drawing attention to end-credit ‘windowing’ and 45 46 the use of interactive graphics such as the BBC’s Red Button, she examines the way that 47 48 online and interactive appeals in the ‘screen real estate’ of end-credits envisaged a 49 50 transforming audience, one inclined to pursue onward journeys to others types of (digital) 51 content. Similarly, Catherine Johnson demonstrates how television junctions reveal a 52 53 change in the ‘communicative ethos’ of broadcasting in the late 2000s (2013, 26). 54 55 Specifically, she points to the increasing significance of spatial, as well as temporal, 56 57 metaphors in the way that broadcast flow has been structured and presented through BBC 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 5 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

5 1 2 3 television junctions, visually representing ‘the parallel journeys that the viewer could take to 4 5 watch television programmes across different channels or platforms’ (ibid, 31). Since 2007, 6 7 the iPlayer logo and ‘play’ symbol has become part of the BBC’s spatial and temporal 8 address; it has been used in end-credits as a reminder of programme availability through 9 10 catch-up but also as a call to action, encouraging audiences to engage with content 11 2 12 extensions and interactive services as part of the BBC’s digital offer. If, as Daniel 13 14 Chamberlain contends, media interfaces ‘have offered personalization and control as a 15 challenge to liveness and flow as the dominant ontologies and ideologies of contemporary 16 17 entertainment media’ (2011, 251), the heightened visibility of the iPlayer logo and web 18 For Review Only 19 address on terrestrial screens has become a mark of this ‘challenge’; it draws attention to a 20 21 process where the ontology of television has been promoted as moving between 22 broadcasting flow and digital database. 23 24 25 The popular imagination of BBC iPlayer is not simply shaped by the logos and promos 26 27 that sit in television junctions but also by the very design of iPlayer as a media interface. 28 Indeed, the architecture and look of iPlayer all help frame user experience in ways that 29 30 contribute to iPlayer’s sense and meaning as a product. My interest, however, lies in the 31 32 media paratexts (Gray 2010) that surround iPlayer and that create interpretive frames for 33 34 the service. This brings to the fore bespoke promos that have appeared in the BBC’s 35 36 broadcast schedule. Forming the basis of marketing campaigns which have been developed 37 and extended through digital media, iPlayer interstitials range from fleeting 10-second 38 39 teasers (such as ‘download something good before you go’) to 30-40 second trailers that 40 41 enact or offer tutorials in iPlayer use. In addition, minute-long promos have been used to 42 43 tell a brand story (‘always there when you need us’, ‘if you love something let it show’). In 44 the remainder of this essay, I look at four interstitials shown across BBC channels in the 45 46 2010s which demonstrate transitions in the BBC’s representation of iPlayer. It is not my 47 48 intention to provide an exhaustive account of the creative genesis of these promos, or 49 50 provide a detailed discussion of their production history within and between BBC marketing 51 teams and the promotional intermediaries such as Red Bee Media that have made them 52 53 (see Grainge and Johnson 2015, 66-76). Instead, I want to provide a portrait of the BBC’s 54 55 construction of iPlayer through the fleeting, but ubiquitous, form of on-air promos. 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 6 of 21

6 1 2 3 Pink portals, mainstream mums and recommendations of love: iPlayer interstitials 4 5 6 7 The history of BBC iPlayer is tied in policy terms to the review of the Corporation’s charter 8 9 that took place between 2003 and 2006, the government process that reviews the role of 10 the BBC and its right to collect the license fee from the British public. Following proposals in 11 12 2003 by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport that the sixth ‘core purpose’ of the 13 14 BBC was ‘building digital Britain’, the 2006 charter review gave the Corporation 15 16 responsibility for ‘helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications 17 technologies and services’ (DCMS 2006, 3). iPlayer became a key BBC service in this context, 18 For Review Only 19 and expressed the BBC’s public service role as a ‘trusted guide’ within the potentially 20 21 disruptive world of digital distribution. According to Elizabeth Evans and Paul McDonald, 22 23 BBC iPlayer and Channel 4’s equivalent on-demand service 4oD (redesigned as All 4 in 2014) 24 are the most common platforms for digital distribution in the UK. They note that ‘during 25 26 intense industrial change, the established broadcasters act as a signal of consistency and 27 28 predictability in a moment of upheaval in the way that audiences can engage with media 29 30 texts’ (2014, 167). In a period of connected viewing, iPlayer became, and to a large extent 31 32 remains, the most prominent embodiment of television’s interface with digital in the UK. It 33 is not in the scope of this essay to address the various techno-cultural debates that stem 34 35 from this, from iPlayer’s formalization of streaming technology to questions of whether 36 37 iPlayer should be available internationally or fall within the scope of the licence fee. Rather, 38 39 I seek to trace vernacular shifts that have occurred within iPlayer interstitials since 2010 that 40 encapsulate the BBC’s attempt to broaden the service within mainstream use. These shifts 41 42 reflect the BBC’s development strategy for iPlayer, known internally as the ‘three beyonds’ - 43 44 ‘beyond PC, beyond catch-up, beyond the early-adopter’ (Dan Taylor-Watt, interview. 16 45 46 December 2014). 47 48 Reflecting on the challenges of marketing iPlayer, the BBC’s audience research manager 49 50 for the service, Alison Button, would comment in interview, 51 52 53 54 55 iPlayer is extremely difficult to market because if you show what it does, it looks 56 like you’re trying to advertise Doctor Who and EastEnders - people get hung up 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 7 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

7 1 2 3 with the visuals of the content [iPlayer] has got - and if you try and focus on the 4 5 features it sounds like a geeky advert for a website with a lot of technical lists 6 7 and that is not what it is either. So it is really hard to get across. (interview. 16 8 December 2014) 9 10 11 12 13 Button’s point of reference in making this observation was a marketing campaign in 2010 14 15 that wedded the visuals of BBC content to images of technological wonder. Developed on 16 17 the cusp of the multiscreen explosion associated with tablets and smartphones, this 18 campaign used theFor motif of the Review digital portal to enact theOnly discovery of iPlayer’s ‘next level’; 19 20 the campaign depicted people (mostly in their twenties and thirties) stepping and jumping 21 22 through a mystical pink gateway that hovered magically in city streets, across the face of 23 24 buildings, and in a forest outside a tent. 25 26 Insert Fig. 1. iPlayer as portal: the ‘Next Level’ campaign (2010) 27 28 29 In metaphoric terms, the depiction of iPlayer as a ‘pink portal’ was of its time. Indeed, 30 Will Brooker suggests that the representation of digital platforms within popular narratives 31 32 in the late 2000s often used the imagery and language of portals as a means of ‘training us 33 34 in the uses of digital technology and emphasizing the social mastery that results from 35 36 understanding the world as data, and learning to read it, navigate it and manipulate it’ 37 (2010, 554). By this account, the pink portal trailers imagined the BBC as a world of data, an 38 39 environment that could be read, navigated and manipulated by jumping through iPlayer’s 40 41 digital threshold. Foregrounding the facility of iPlayer to recommend programmes to friends 42 43 online and remember personal favourites, iPlayer was portrayed as an electronic cosmos. 44 45 The promos depicted pink auroras containing the literal stars of the BBC’s primetime 46 schedule - digital constellations that could be touched and shared by anyone stepping into 47 48 the BBC’s online universe. Reminding audiences of the public service value of this digital 49 50 experience, the promos finished with the strapline ‘your very own BBC’. The ‘next level’ 51 52 campaign was the first to position iPlayer as an entertainment destination, a portal that had 53 multiple functions that enabled new ways of encountering BBC content (favourites, 54 55 recommendations, downloading, parental lock) rather than as a simple device for catch-up. 56 57 However, Button notes that the ‘next level’ campaign didn’t ‘cut through’ in marketing 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 8 of 21

8 1 2 3 terms, either in the way that it sought to convey iPlayer in experiential terms, or in 4 5 communicating with audiences beyond early-adopting (male) users. This led to alternative 6 7 vernacular strategies in the way that the BBC sought to ‘get across’ iPlayer in the design of 8 on-air promos. 9 10 11 The popular imagination of iPlayer would shift in the early 2010s as managerial 12 discourse at the BBC focused on the ‘three beyond’ strategy. This would correlate with the 13 14 extension of iPlayer as a multiplatform device, but also with attempts to expand 15 16 mainstream usage, tenets of the BBC’s public service remit to drive new digital platforms 17 18 and consumption patternsFor among Review a wide-ranging demog Onlyraphic. In 2012, a 40-second trailer 19 20 was broadcast in the BBC schedule called ‘beyond the computer’. Moving away from the 21 imagery of portals, the promo represented the ‘play’ logo of iPlayer descending onto screen 22 23 devices being used in buildings and spaces across the UK. Set to a ballad with the lyric ‘I’ve 24 25 been searching all my days’, the play logo dropped quietly onto buses, beach huts, canal 26 27 boats, office blocks, bus stops, holiday homes, windmills, council flats, terraced houses, 28 even portable toilets. Contemplative in tone, the trailer ended with a shot of a twinkling 29 30 urban night sky with multiple pink logos falling to the ground. 31 32 33 Insert Figure 2, ‘Beyond the computer’ (2012) 34 35 Released in the year of the final switchover from analogue to digital terrestrial 36 37 television in the UK, ‘beyond the computer’ depicted iPlayer as something existing in the 38 39 national ether. In the same period that households in the UK were being trained through 40 government information leaflets and TV campaigns to prepare for digital switchover, the 41 42 promo vernacularized the discourse of ‘digital Britain’. One of a number of images of 43 44 platform mobility developed by television and telecommunication companies in this period 45 46 (Tryon 2012), ‘beyond the computer’ gave mobile digital culture a public service imprimatur. 47 Promoting the ability to watch ‘your favourite BBC programmes wherever and whenever 48 49 you want to’, the ad mapped the BBC’s world of data onto British spaces and spectrums. 50 51 Although bearing out Chuck Tryon’s observation that ‘media mobility promotes a more 52 53 fragmented, individualized notion of spectatorship’ (2012, 288), iPlayer promos conveyed 54 55 digital connectivity as a project of collective national bearing. According to the BBC, ‘a fully 56 connected digital Britain could be a nation in which everyone, irrespective of income or 57 58 circumstance, could benefit from the social, cultural, economic and practical benefits of the 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 9 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

9 1 2 3 new digital environment’ (2009, 3). ‘Beyond the computer’ offered spatialized images of 4 5 these ‘practical benefits’, audiences empowered to access BBC content according to their 6 7 own schedules in a port-a-loo if they so wished. 8 9 The promo did not contain images of BBC content or focus on technical features. 10 11 Instead of representing iPlayer as a luminous gateway that people jumped through, the 12 promo accentuated the effortless portability of the service on tablets and mobile phones.3 13 14 Meanwhile it depicted users ‘beyond the early-adopter’, moving away from twenty- 15 16 somethings and gadget-loving men and towards camera-shots and close-ups of women, the 17 18 last image of the promoFor showing Review a middle-aged woman Only viewing her tablet alone, smiling 19 20 contentedly in bed. If, as William Boddy argues, digital technology is often inflected with the 21 rhetorical project of remasculinizing the television apparatus through fantasies of power 22 23 and control (2004, 73), ‘beyond the computer’ mapped this sense of control more overtly to 24 25 the public and private needs of female users. This gendering would continue in subsequent 26 27 iPlayer interstitials, the female user becoming a discrete lens used in BBC marketing to 28 imagine and drive mainstream take-up of the service. 29 30 31 Expanding mainstream usage of iPlayer was a key objective for the BBC in the 2010s. 32 33 For those responsible for iPlayer strategy at the BBC, the fact that iPlayer accounted for 34 under 3 percent of all BBC audience viewing signalled a problematic gap between high 35 36 brand awareness and actual use among mainstream audiences. While rebutting claims that 37 38 iPlayer’s audience had plateaued in 2015, the Head of BBC iPlayer, Dan Taylor-Watt (2015), 39 40 remarked in a blog post, ‘the challenge for us is to get everyone using iPlayer – whether 41 that’s to make the journey to work better, the holiday in the middle of no-where in the rain 42 43 more enjoyable or just easily catch-up on what you’ve missed from the comfort of your 44 45 sofa’. This rhetoric was also used by Victoria Jaye (‘Head of TV Content, BBC iPlayer’) who, at 46 47 the time of writing, leads the ‘product development group’ for iPlayer within the BBC along 48 49 with Taylor-Watt. As early as 2012, Jaye explained her view that getting everyone to use 50 iPlayer meant communicating the relevance , rather than simply the availability, of iPlayer to 51 52 audiences. She commented, 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 10 of 21

10 1 2 3 I have always said that to get mainstream audiences into iPlayer, we have to 4 5 answer a need for them . . . we have got to solve their entertainment needs 6 7 rather than present them with new, clever technology . . . Brand awareness 8 of iPlayer is very high in the UK, but large sectors of the population still don’t 9 10 use us regularly, so why is there the gap? They (mainstream audiences) just 11 12 don’t think it is relevant to their entertainment needs and I think that is the 13 14 thing we have got to crack. We want iPlayer to be a daily habit for 15 audiences. Promotion is a key part of getting audiences to think iPlayer is the 16 17 place where they want to go first, for the best entertainment (interview. 2 18 For Review Only 19 July 2012) 20 21 22 23 24 By Jaye’s account, ‘beyond the computer’ was a brand awareness trailer. In this respect, it 25 26 was significant in reminding broadcast viewers about the availability of the service but not 27 as focused on communicating relevance, of helping ‘big television audiences understand the 28 29 value that is delivered to their viewing television, how it transforms it and enables it on 30 31 more of their terms’ (ibid). The next major campaign focused more purposefully on what 32 33 Jaye calls the ‘need-states’ of audiences (interview, 16 December 2014). Rather than a 34 ballad to platform mobility, the on-air promo that accompanied the launch of a redesigned 35 36 iPlayer in March 2014 identified ‘moments and opportunities’ where iPlayer could fit into 37 38 people’s daily lives. 4 Focusing on what the BBC audience and marketing team for iPlayer 39 40 referred to as ‘mainstream mums’, the campaign would enact a vernacular shift in iPlayer 41 promotion in the mid-2010s, the service framed in relation to ephemeral moments in 42 43 everyday British life. 44 45 46 The focus on mainstream mums developed from audience and marketing analysis by 47 the BBC that used questionnaire data to identify six main demographic segments of the 48 49 iPlayer audience. These were based on life stage and included the segments 16-24, 25-39 50 51 (with and without children), 40-55 (men and women), and 55+. Mainstream mums became 52 53 a key target group within this breakdown and described females ‘in their thirties and forties 54 55 who have probably got some kids, have the least time because they are juggling work and 56 children and families and everything. And they often have no control of the remote because 57 58 either dad has got it or the kids have got it’ (Alison Button, interview. 16 December 2014). 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 11 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

11 1 2 3 As an audience personae, ‘mainstream mums’ were seen to represent a group ‘who just 4 5 think it [iPlayer] is not for them . . . because they think it is a bit geeky or they think they 6 7 have to be a super user on the phone’ (ibid.). This provided the context for a sixty second 8 television promo called ‘always there when you need it’ which developed a sense of BBC 9 10 iPlayer as a tool, friend and form of support. Focusing on the 25-39 segment (with children) 11 12 - with the 16-24 segment figured, in marketing parlance, as ‘the halo’ - the promo used The 13 14 Smith’s accessible, up-tempo hit ‘This Charming Man’ to code a depiction of bustling, on- 15 the-go, iconoclastically British life. 16 17 18 Insert Figure 3. ‘AlwaysFor there whenReview you need it’ (2014) Only 19 20 In narrative terms, ‘always there when you need it’ enacted a range of scenes 21 22 corresponding with prospective iPlayer ‘moments’. These included, to name just four, ‘half 23 24 term when you need to get things done’ (depicting a mother on the phone with children 25 26 running noisily around the table), ‘the breakroom where no-one talks to each other’ (two 27 colleagues of different generations uneasily sharing lunchtime), ‘waiting for your mates to 28 29 wake up after a sleepover at his house’ (a young boy gazing wistfully out of a bedroom 30 31 window), and ‘Dad’s total domination of the remote’ (a father wrestling the TV remote from 32 33 his three young daughters). While the trailer played on linear television, other moments 34 more relevant to 16-24s (e.g. a Sunday morning hangover) were extracted and played 35 36 through digital media. Following on from the ‘download something good’ teasers described 37 38 at the start of this essay, ‘always there when you need it’ connected iPlayer with scenarios 39 40 of social and familial need. Unlike ‘beyond the computer’ which dwelt on individualized 41 images of platform mobility, ‘download before you go’ and ‘always there when you need it’ 42 43 imagined scenes where iPlayer could fit into the time-pressed lives of people negotiating 44 45 hectic, harassed, occasionally hungover and sometimes socially awkward moments of the 46 47 day. Without showing a single screen device, the promo focused on iPlayer’s capacity to 48 49 meet entertainment needs and become a ‘daily habit’ within fleeting moments of the day. 50 51 According to Max Dawson, digital television technologies in the US became linked in 52 53 the 2000s to prevailing discourses of attention management. He suggests that digital video 54 55 recorders, in particular, were ‘reimagined as a time-management tool, a defence against 56 distraction, an educational instrument or parenting aid, and the DVR owner as an 57 58 enterprising investor in her own time and attention’ (2014, 225). In many ways, ‘download 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 12 of 21

12 1 2 3 before you go’ and ‘always there when you need it’ accurately fit this description in their 4 5 various depictions of dead travel time, and situations where children need occupying. 6 7 Where Dawson connects promotional discourses around the DVR to wider neoliberal 8 ideologies, however - notably the reflexive project of learning how to allocate attention 9 10 profitably - I would argue that the promotional imagination of iPlayer is parsed differently in 11 12 these and other trailers. In discursive terms, iPlayer promos have been used to make an 13 14 argument for the public value of the BBC. As Alison Button suggests, echoing comments by 15 Victoria Jaye, the tactical purpose of ‘always there when you need it’ was to focus on ‘the 16 17 people who have all the right kit and are easily competent to do it and yet they’re not 18 For Review Only 19 seeing that they could get value from the BBC and catch up on the programmes they love’ 20 21 (interview. 16 December 2014). The language of value invoked here was widely used at the 22 BBC between the charter reviews of 2006 and 2016. According to Niki Strange, ‘public value’ 23 24 was adopted wholesale by the BBC in the 2000s ‘as a notion for achieving efficient public 25 26 management’ (2011, 135). In one sense the managerial goal of maximizing the efficient 27 28 delivery and consumption of BBC content can be seen to connect with the ideology of 29 30 neoliberalism mapped by Dawson. At the same time, what Strange calls the BBC’s attempt 31 to ‘reframe notions of public service as “public value” in the digital age’ (ibid.) develops 32 33 from wider attempts to rationalize and protect the BBC from the assault of hostile 34 35 commercial rivals and a Conservative government seemingly intent on reducing its size. 36 37 Indeed, attacks on the BBC became acute in the years leading up to charter review in 2016, 38 and in ways that had a bearing on promotional discourse around BBC iPlayer. 39 40 41 This was especially marked with the publication of a government green paper in July 42 43 2015 that acted as a post-election, pre-charter broadside. In what can be seen as an early 44 attempt by the newly elected Conservative Party to diminish the BBC’s role and operations 45 46 as a public service broadcaster, the green paper presented a number of proposals designed 47 48 to narrow the BBC’s scope. This included the suggestion that the Corporation no longer 49 50 make popular entertainment but, instead, restrict itself to highbrow programming supplied 51 less readily by commercial broadcasters. It is in this context that a pan-BBC promotional 52 53 campaign called ‘if you love something let it show’ took on particular discursive resonance, 54 55 celebrating the BBC as a provider of popular entertainment for all. Released four months 56 57 before the green paper, and broadcast through 2015, the sixty-second promo featured a 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 13 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

13 1 2 3 cover of The Beatles ‘All you need is love’ and conveyed BBC content in terms of affect. In 4 5 narrative terms, the promo captured people in moments of happiness, pride, absorption, 6 7 and joy. This included a father carrying his daughter to bed, a child cooking, siblings at play 8 in the kitchen, a man avoiding football scores in a shop window, four twenty-something girls 9 10 dancing in a bedroom, an elderly Afro-Caribbean man conducting music while listening to 11 12 headphones, another pensioner sitting proudly on a lawnmower, and a grey-haired couple 13 14 ballroom dancing. As the chorus of the song builds, a red heart appeared on screen with the 15 name of BBC content relevant to the image - CBeebies storytime app, Bake Off, 16 17 Doctor Who, Match of the Day, Annie Mac, The Proms, Gardeners’ World, 18 For Review Only 19 Strictly. The campaign was accompanied by interstitial videos of celebrities explaining BBC 20 21 programmes they love, and a website curating collections of ‘most loved’ programmes. 22 These collections were based on ratings, online data and social media, but also interactive 23 24 clicks made through a heart button included within programme information pages on BBC 25 26 iPlayer. 27 28 Insert Figure 4 ‘If you love something let it show’ (2015) 29 30 31 The core purpose of the campaign was to facilitate practices of sharing 32 33 recommendations through iPlayer. This was linked to an initiative called ‘myBBC’, launched 34 by the Corporation in March 2015 to encourage audiences to sign-in when using BBC online 35 36 services. At one level, ‘if you love something’ helped foreground the BBC’s focus on data as 37 38 a mechanism of delivering more personalized BBC content. The prominent heart-shaped 39 40 icon within the promo served as a ‘call to action’. By inviting viewers to use the love button 41 and discover the associated website and hashtag, the campaign was designed to connect 42 43 iPlayer to social media behaviours and an ethos of ‘public service recommendation’. 44 45 Situating the BBC’s place within a culture of connectivity, the promo was an articulation of 46 47 Tony Hall’s mission statement for the BBC in the internet era, in particular the ambition to 48 49 ‘reinvent public service broadcasting through data’ (Hall 2015). At the same time, however, 50 the promo inscribed values of universality and mixed-programming in its symbolic 51 52 inscription of BBC content. Set to a cover version of one of the Beatles’ most recognisable 53 54 songs, the promo referenced programmes and enacted quotidian scenes that conveyed a 55 56 sense of common ‘feeling’ for the BBC. Reminiscent of the BBC’s evangelical ‘Perfect day’ 57 video in 1997 (Grainge 2010) - released in a previous election year to shore up popular 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 14 of 21

14 1 2 3 support for the BBC - the affectivity of the promo anticipated tempestuous political winds. 4 5 With charter review looming, the promo would serve the BBC’s own political ‘need states’ in 6 7 a moment when the Corporation’s public service identity - specifically the BBC’s role 8 providing shared viewing experiences around popular entertainment – was being challenged 9 10 by newly vituperative government attacks. 11 12 The on-air promos discussed in this essay form part of a lineage of marketing texts 13 14 that have been used by the BBC to help justify the Corporation’s value and unique funding 15 16 arrangement to government and the viewing public (Johnson 2012, 84-111). By examining 17 18 four key paratexts Forbetween 2010 Review and 2015, I have traced Only shifts in the marketing address of 19 20 iPlayer in a period when the BBC was striving to communicate its role as a digital 21 broadcaster (Johnson and Grainge, 2018). Initially marketing iPlayer in 2007 through a focus 22 23 on catch-up - captured in the tagline ‘making the unmissable unmissable’ - the BBC sought 24 25 in the 2010s to extend the function and imagination of the service as a mainstream 26 27 entertainment destination. In vernacular terms, this was signalled by a transition from the 28 metaphor of portals and the rhetoric of platform mobility to a narrative emphasis on ‘need- 29 30 states’ - promos that enacted the role of iPlayer within fleeting, everyday moments where 31 32 the social practices of on-demand television (both real-life and networked) were seen to 33 5 34 have value. 35 36 Considering the transition from analogue to digital television since the late 1990s, 37 38 William Boddy points to ongoing uncertainty about television’s ‘role as signifier of national 39 40 identity (and public service broadcasting’s political rationale in the UK and elsewhere), its 41 ontology of liveness and photographic realism, and its place as a consumer product within 42 43 the gendered household’ (2004, 124). In different ways, iPlayer promos articulate these 44 45 questions of national identity, media ontology, and gendered domestic (and non-domestic) 46 47 practice. Along with it, they express the attempt by the BBC to frame the Corporation’s 48 49 public service rationale in a digital world. If, as Charlotte Higgins suggests, the BBC stands in 50 the 2010s as ‘both beloved institution and cultural and political battleground’ (2015, 212), 51 52 iPlayer promos help illuminate not only the social construction of on-demand television in 53 54 the UK market, but also the ongoing negotiation of the BBC’s beloved-cum-battleground 55 56 presence in British media life. As a cultural and critical resource, on-air promos for BBC 57 iPlayer provide their own ‘moment and opportunity’ to consider how ephemeral TV 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 15 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

15 1 2 3 interstitials have helped to position the BBC’s digital relevance and social role in an age of 4 5 public service media. 6 7 8 9 10 References 11 12 BBC. 2014. ‘ Introducing the new BBC iPlayer - BBC iPlayer 2014 Press Launch’. 11 March. 13 14 Accessed 10 December 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AdUHw_sSw0 15 16 BBC. 2009. Digital Britain: the BBC’s Role, The BBC Executive’s Response to Digital Britain – 17 the Interim Report , March 2009. 18 For Review Only 19 Bennett, James, and Niki Strange. 2014. ‘Linear Legacies: Managing the Multiplatform 20 21 Production Process’. In Making Media Work , edited by Derek Johnson, Derek Kompare, and 22 23 Avi Santo, 63-89. New York: New University Press 24 25 Boddy, William. 2004. New Media and Popular Imagination . Oxford: Oxford University Press. 26 27 Brooker, Will. 2010 ‘“Now You’re Thinking with Portals”: Media Training for a Digital World’. 28 29 International Journal of Cultural Studies 13 (6): 553-73. 30 31 32 Carter, Stephen. 2009. Digital Britain , HM Government, Department of Business Innovation 33 & Skills and Department for Culture, Media & Sport. 34 35 36 Chamberlain, Daniel. 2011. ‘Scripted Spaces: Television Interfaces and the Non-Places of 37 38 Asynchronous Entertainment’. In Television as Digital Media , edited by James Bennett and 39 Niki Strange, 230-54. Durham: Duke University Press. 40 41 42 Dawson, Max. 2014. ‘Rationalizing Television in the USA: Neoliberalism, the Attention 43 44 Economy and the Digital Video Recorder’. Screen 55 (2): 221-37. 45 46 Department for Culture, Media & Sport. 2006. Broadcasting: Copy of the Royal Charter for 47 48 the Continuance of the British Broadcasting Corporation . London: The Stationary Office. 49 50 Dijck, José Van. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media . Oxford: 51 52 Oxford University Press. 53 54 Evans, Elizabeth, and Paul McDonald. 2014. ‘Online Distribution of Film and Television in the 55 56 UK: Behaviour, Taste, and Value’. In Connected Viewing , edited by Jennifer Holt and Kevin 57 58 Sanson, 158-79. New York: Routledge. 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 16 of 21

16 1 2 3 Grainge, Paul, and Catherine Johnson. 2015. Promotional Screen Industries . London: 4 5 Routledge. 6 7 Grainge, Paul. 2010. ‘Elvis Sings for the BBC: Broadcast Branding and Digital Media Design’, 8 9 Media, Culture & Society . 32 (1): 45-61 10 11 Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and other Media Paratexts . 12 13 New York. New York University Press. 14 15 16 Hall, Tony. 2015. ‘The BBC in the Internet Era’. Speech delivered at New Broadcasting 17 House, 2 March. Accessed 4 June 2015. 18 For Review Only 19 http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2015/tony-hall-bbc-internet-era 20 21 22 Hall, Tony. 2013. ‘Where Next?’ Speech delivered at BBC Radio Theatre, 8 October. Accessed 23 4 May 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2013/tony-hall-vision.html 24 25 26 Higgins, Charlotte. 2015. This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the 27 BBC. London: Guardian Books. 28 29 30 Johnson, Catherine. 2013. ‘The Continuity of ‘Continuity’: Flow and the Changing 31 32 Experience of Watching Broadcast Television’, Key Words, 11 (3): 23-39. 33 34 Johnson, Catherine. 2012. Branding Television . London: Routledge. 35 36 Johnson, Catherine, and Paul Grainge. (2018). ‘From Catch-up TV to Online TV: Digital 37 38 Broadcasting and the Case of BBC iPlayer,’ Screen, forthcoming. 39 40 41 Ofcom. 2014 Ofcom, The Communications Market 2014 . Accessed 1 August 2015. 42 http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr14/UK_2.pdf 43 44 Strange, Niki. 2011. ‘Multiplatforming Public Service: The BBC’s “Bundled Project”’. In 45 46 Television as Digital Media , edited by James Bennett and Niki Strange, 132-57. Durham: 47 48 Duke University Press. 49 50 Taylor-Watt, Dan. 2015. ‘Putting BBC iPlayer performance in context’, 29 May. Accessed 30 51 May 2015 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/6be54086-c2e4-4e85-a777- 52 53 0fc72be30010 54 55 Tryon, Chuck. 2012. ‘Make Any Room For Your TV: Digital Delivery and Media Mobility’. 56 57 Screen 53 (3): 287-300 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 17 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

17 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 According to research by Ofcom, 89 percent of all television viewing was live in 2013 7 (Ofcom 2014, 141) 8 2 In 2013, for example, iPlayer logos signalled initiatives such as BBC Playlister, a personal 9 music platform enabling audiences to create playlists from BBC radio and TV content. 10 11 Similarly, in 2014, iPlayer was positioned as the gateway to BBC iWonder, newly launched 12 interactive educational guides developed around programme-related themes. 13 3 The mobile app for iPlayer launched in 2011 and was downloaded 28 million times in its 14 first three years (BBC 2014). 15 4 This redesign introduced new features within the iPlayer’s user interface such as smarter 16 17 search and image-led navigation, online first commissions, and collections of curated 18 programming, amongFor other technological-editorial Review ch angesOnly (see Johnson and Grainge, 19 2018). 20 5 Writing about the ‘culture of connectivity’, José Van Dijck suggests that ‘many of the habits 21 that have recently become permeated by social media platforms used to be informal and 22 ephemeral manifestations of social life’ (2013, 6). On these terms, ‘if you love something let 23 24 it show’ foregrounds ephemeral moments in daily life as a means of promoting the 25 ‘platformed sociality’ of iPlayer. 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 18 of 21

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 For Review Only 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Fig. 1. iPlayer as portal: the ‘Next Level’ campaign (2010) 30 18x13mm (600 x 600 DPI) 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 19 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 For Review Only 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Fig. 2, ‘Beyond the computer’ (2012) 27 21691x12192mm (1 x 1 DPI) 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Critical Studies in Television Page 20 of 21

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 For Review Only 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Fig 3. ‘Always there when you need it’ (2014) 27 21691x12192mm (1 x 1 DPI) 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst Page 21 of 21 Critical Studies in Television

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 For Review Only 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Fig. 4 ‘If you love something let it show’ (2015) 27 32512x18288mm (1 x 1 DPI) 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mcst